One of the most repeated criticisms of the DC Extended Universe series of movies so far has been their bleakness, their negativity, and their general sense of nihilism. There’s literally a line inBatman V. Superman: Dawn of Justicewhere Superman says, “No one stays good in this world.” Great message from the man who stands for truth, justice and the American way, right? Well, an antidote may be coming in the form of a man who’s very much like Superman in terms of super-powers, but now Shazam!will have to find the fun and light-heartedness of the being a superhero in the DCEU.

“The big attraction for me with that character is the fact that every kid dreams of being Superman, right? I mean I certainly did, and (Billy Batson) is a kid that gets that chance,” Shazam! director David F. Sandberg told the Toronto Sun. Sandberg is presently doing a round of promotion for his next film, Annabelle: Creation. “He gets to become the superhero. So it’ll be big with superpowers in a way. In terms of what people can expect, I think this will be one of the more fun or lighthearted movies so far in the DC universe. It certainly will be a departure.”

One can only hope. AlthoughWonder Womancertainly showed an improvement in disposition for the DCEU, it still predominately took place in the bleak as hell final days of World War I, which was the furthest thing from a laugh riot.

It was recently revealed that Shazam! will be the next film in the DCEU to go into production after Justice League andAquaman, and it’s been previously reported that this will be the first of a two-part movie that will focus on the Shazam! family of characters, including nemesis Black Adam, who is going to be played by Dwayne Johnson. No release date or star for Shazam! has been announced, but stay tuned…

As you’ve undoubtedly heard, Game of Thronesis the most pirated show in the world. Although millions and millions of people tune into the show every Sunday night on HBO, millions and millions more torrent or stream the show on various pirate sites. If you’re one of the latter, you may already know that the next episode of season 7 has already made its way online. It’s another blow to the premium cable channel who’s been on pins and needles all week worrying about a leak after it was announced they were hacked. Just one thing, this leak didn’t come from the hack, or the hackers.

The Verge initially reported the leak of “The Spoils of War”, an oddly prescient title given the situation. The source of the episode, which was low-quality and plastered with a “for internal viewing only” watermark, initially turned up on a Reddit feed and linking to Google Drive. Further reporting by Variety though revealed that the hack was not the source of the leak, but rather the episode came from Star India, one of HBO’s partners in distributing the show. Star India is a media company based in Mumbai and owned by 21st Century Fox; it’s one of many media partners that HBO relies on to air Game of Thrones around the world.

So on the brights side, this is not a release from the hack, of which still not much has been public revealed except that the information they purloined about Thrones has been called considerable; scripts for the final episodes are supposedly amongst the bounty they swiped from HBO servers. On the other hand though, HBO is going to have to take one of their business partners in hand because Game of Thrones material is only going to get more valuable on the internet black market the closer we get to the series finale.

Looking back at the original Death Wishin 1974, Michael Winner‘s film starring a then-53-year-old Charles Bronson is a time capsule. The 70s saw ever escalating crime rates in America, and the population felt powerless before a rising tide of particularly urban violence where random shootings, muggings and other attacks were becoming a daily reality. Understandably, people thought that one man with gun and the guts to dispense rough justice might have been the answer, hence the popularity of Winner’s Death Wish, even though several cultural commentators felt that Winner’s film was feeding America negative reinforcement of easy justice at the end of a gun held in the right hands.

You could write an entire thesis on some of the ideas and themes contained in Death Wish, especially looking back 43 years into the past, but one wonders what will be seen in the Eli Roth remake starring Bruce Willis in four decades. The trailer for the new film was just released.

Well, setting the movie in Chicago was shrewd given recent news, but cuing the “Back in Black” as Willis’ Paul Kersey starts to go Judge Dredd on the Windy City underworld? That seems a little bizarre. Indeed, the trailer hits at the idea of a very bipolar movie. Is Roth trying to capture that middle class anxiety of out of control crime coming for you in your perfect home, or is this supposed to be fun seeing Kersey avenge the death of his wife and the attack on his daughter? If you’re playing AC/DC loud, you kind of throw subtlety out the window.

Plot Synopsis:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures presents director Eli Roth’s reimagining of the classic 1974 revenge thriller Death Wish. Dr. Paul Kersey (Bruce Willis) is a surgeon who only sees the aftermath of Chicago violence when it is rushed into his ER – until his wife (Elisabeth Shue) and college-age daughter (Camila Morrone) are viciously attacked in their suburban home. With the police overloaded with crimes, Paul, burning for revenge, hunts his family’s assailants to deliver justice. As the anonymous slayings of criminals grabs the media’s attention, the city wonders if this deadlyvigilante is a guardian angel or a grim reaper. Fury and fate collide in the intense, action-thriller Death Wish.

Paul Kersey becomes a divided person: A man who saves lives, and a man who takes them; a husband and father trying to take care of his family, and a shadowy figure fighting Chicago crime; a surgeon extracting bullets from suspects’ bodies, and the vigilante called “The Grim Reaper” who detectives are quickly closing in on.

By bringing the complex psychology of Brian Garfield’s book up-to-the-moment and injecting new thrills and a stark, unflinchinglook at the American psyche in 2017, Eli Roth and Death Wish brings audiences to the height of unforgettable suspense.

A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures production, Death Wish is set for release on November 22, 2017. It will be distributed in the U.S. by APR and internationally by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. Death Wish stars Bruce Willis, Vincent D’Onofrio, Elisabeth Shue, Camila Morrone, Dean Norris, Kimberly Elise. Directed by Eli Roth. Screenplay by Joe Carnahan, based on the 1974 Motion Picture by Wendell Mayes from the Novel by Brian Garfield. Producer, Roger Birnbaum. Associate Producer, Stephen J. Eads. Executive Producer, Ilona Herzberg. Director of Photography, Rogier Stoffers. Edited by Mark Goldblatt. Music by Ludwig Göransson. Production Design by Paul Kirby. Costume Design by Mary Jane Fort.

Death Wish co-stars Elizabeth Shue, Camila Morrone,Vincent D’Onofrio, Jack Kesy, Dean Norris, and Mike Epps and will be in theatres everywhere this November.

Marvel Studios’ successes with its cinematic universe started a race of sorts for every studio to develop its own insular series of various movies that all take place in the same world. Warner Bros. had things easy with its stable of DC Comics characters, but others like Paramount and Universal had things tougher. The former decided to turn its lucrative Transformersseries into a universe with the various spin-offs, and the latter decided to take its stable of monsters and turn that into an expansive film universe. But we’ve seen the results of that now, and some key players are starting to have second thoughts.

The most straightforward of these matters if Akiva Goldsman. The Oscar-winning screenwriter was the head of the writers room for Transformers and had a story credit on the recently released The Last Knight, so he had a not-so-insignificant role in helping to create this new Transformers world. But when asked by /Film if he was carrying on with the franchise at the Television Critics Association Press Tour, Goldsman gave them a very terse, “No.” Bumblebee, the next film in the series, has a solo writing credit for Christina Hodson.

Meanwhile, things look dark for the “Dark Universe” over at Universal. One of the people in charge of that franchise is Alex Kurtzman, and while he was at TCA to promote Star Trek: Discovery, the producer/director shared his doubts about his future with the Dark U. “You know the truth is, I don’t know. I really don’t know. I haven’t really decided is the honest answer,” he told IGN. “I have to stay interested in it. I have to feel like my passion is there for it. I think in the case of Star Trek if your passion isn’t there you shouldn’t be doing it.”

We haven’t heard much about the Dark Universe since the disappointing release of The Mummy earlier this summer. The film made $400 million worldwide, which is hardly chump change, but three-quarters of that gross comes from the overseas market; The Mummy has only made $80 million at the North American box office since its early June release. Transformers: The Last Knight has done a little bit better with $128 million so far in North American and approaching $600 million worldwide, which is about half of the lifetime global gross of Age of Extinction. So is this proof of franchise fatigue? Certainly these key creators seem fatigued. Stay tuned…

There could be no greater compliment for an actor than to be told by a writer that if he knew you would play the part so well he would have never killed you off. Mike Mignola said that of the late great John Hurt and his portrayal of Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm in the Guillermo del Toro adaptation of Hellboyin 2004. So we’re talking about big shoes to fill, not just because of the stature of Hurt as an actor, but because he left his mark on the part so thoroughly that del Toro had to bring him back for The Golden Army even if it was just for a flashback.

Well those shoes are going to be filled in the presently in pre-production Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen, and it will be none other than Ian McShane that will be wearing them. The Hollywood Reporterhas discovered that McShane, most recently of American Gods and John Wick Chapter 2, has been cast in the film as the new Professor Broom. There’s no official confirmation from either McShane or the production, but there was no denial of it either, so it’s a safe bet that McShane will be the father figure and mentor to David Harbour‘s Hellboy in the new film. But what role will McShane as Broom play in the film? Details on that are also still under wraps.

Apparently, Rise of the Blood Queen will begin principal photography sometime next month in U.K. and Bulgaria. The Descent and Doomsday director Neill Marshall will be directing from a script by Andrew Cosby, Christopher Golden, and Mike Mignola. There’s not a release date for the film, but we’ll keep you updated on any and all developments.

Unlike certain otherStar Warsprojects, the main saga series has been running like a Swiss watch of modern filmmaking efficiency. Rian Johnson is wrapping up work on Star Wars: The Last Jedi as we speak, and work has already begun on the next chapter, the as-yet untitled Star Wars: Episode IX, which will be overseen by the steady hands of Jurassic World helmer Colin Trevorrow. Now, Episode IX has already had its share of challenges, primarily the untimely passing of Carrie Fisher, which may be why Trevorrow has decided to farm out some of the writing work to a new set of fingers and his keyboard.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, British writer Jack Thorne has been hired to work on the script for Episode IX, as a new set of “fresh eyes” was needed on the project, said THR‘s sources. Trevorrow and his writing partner Derek Connelly have been working diligently on the script for months now, but it’s likely starting to get into crunch time for the pre-production of the film. There’s only a 15-month window between the release of The Last Jedi and Episode IX, so principal photography will likely begin before the end of the year in order to meet the release date date.

Thorne meanwhile has been getting a lot of buzz for his work on Wonder, an upcoming drama based on the best-selling novel of the same name starring Julia Roberts and Jacob Tremblay, but he’s perhaps best known for his work on British television including The Fades, The Cast-Offs, The Last Panthers and National Treasure, as well as the upcoming BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Obviously plot details on Episode IX are being kept strictly under wraps (until the hackers get them).

Star Wars: Episode IX will be in theatres everywhere in May 2019; it’s predecessor, The Last Jedi, opens this December 15.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

]]>http://nerdbastards.com/2017/08/02/wonder-writer-to-bring-fresh-eyes-to-star-wars-episode-ix-script/feed/0225721Cast for ‘Bumblebee’ Spin-Off Flick Set, and We Know What Form Bee Will Take…!http://nerdbastards.com/2017/08/01/cast-for-bumblebee-spin-off-flick-set-and-we-know-what-form-bee-will-take/
http://nerdbastards.com/2017/08/01/cast-for-bumblebee-spin-off-flick-set-and-we-know-what-form-bee-will-take/#respondTue, 01 Aug 2017 14:49:32 +0000http://nerdbastards.com/?p=225706

Transformers: The Last Knightsort of came and went at the box office earlier this summer, and has barely made $500 million at the worldwide box office, or about half as much asTransformers: Age of Extinctionmade during its run in 2014. That’s probably not a good place to be as you’re looking to expand your film franchise into spin-off movies, but time marches on, and so does the first of planned Transformers cinematic universe in the form of Bumblebee. Based on the yellow sports car that’s been a main character in all the Transformers movies so far, the stage is set for “Bee” to ride solo, and in a familiar form.

First, the cast. Hailee Steinfeld had already been announced as the film’s [human] star, but she will be joined by John Cena, Pamela Aldon, Stephen Schenider, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Jason Drucker, Kenneth Choi, Ricardo Hoyos, Abby Quinn, Rachel Crow, and Grace Dzienny. Travis Knight, director of the stop-motion hit Kubo and the Two Strings, will be the first person to make a live-action Transformers movie not named Michael Bay.

Now the plot, which confirms a pervious revelation that the film will take place in the 80s, but more important than that, the plot description below confirms that Bumblebee will back, by popular demand, as a Volkswagen Beetle, the car form Bumblebee had in the original animated series and toy line.

On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a junkyard in a small Californian beach town. Charlie (Steinfeld), on the cusp of turning 18 and trying to find her place in the world, discovers Bumblebee, battle-scarred and broken. When Charlie revives him, she quickly learns this is no ordinary, yellow VW bug.

In the final bit of Bumblebee news, Paramount has moved the release date of the film to December 21, 2018, putting it right in the way of Warner Bros.’ Aquaman, which comes out that same day, and Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns, which comes out three days after that. So who will blink first in this three blockbuster pile-up?

Principal photography on Bumblebee is currently underway in California. Stay tuned for updates…

So you work at Marvel Comics, and it’s a pretty sweet gig as you get to fill the world with wonderful, adventurous, and colourful comics and characters. So after a hard week at work, it might make sense for you to relax with some coworkers on a Friday afternoon in July by enjoying a milkshake. You deserve it! Well this innocent moment, shared on social media, seemed to make a lot of deeply disturbed people angry, and they shared that anger with said Marvel editor? Why? It might have something to do with the fact that Heather Antos is a female that works in comic books.

In another front on the apparent overwhelming misogyny that lurks just under the surface in the comics world, Marvel editor Antos, who’s worked on a myriad of Marvel books include The Unbelievable Gwenpool and much of the Star Warsline, posted the following innocent tweet…

If you look at this image and say, “Well, that looks like a fun time!” congratulations! You’re a normal human being that isn’t “triggered” by the sight of women having fun, or by the thought that such women work in the comic book business, which, some people (mens, I guess) are of the opinion is supposed to be a boys only profession. Like the folks that are quoted below:

“This does explain the quality’ of work Marvel has been putting out of late.”

“No life experience, the creepiest collection of stereotypical SJWs anyone could possibly imagine.”

“How all these Tumblr SJW fake geek girls club are editors at Marvel?”

We won’t embed the original tweets because these people don’t need the exposure, but clearly something is wrong with this world that the reaction to these women is a) they’re the reason you’re not enjoying comics, b) you think they’re unqualified to work at Marvel just by looking at them, or c) that they aren’t passionate about their work because they’re women working in comic books. Apparently, these men have never heard of Gail Simone, or Amanda Connor, or Patty Jenkins, and on, and on, and on…

Unfortunately, this is an incident that’s all too common in the present comic book industry as it tries to become more representative and reflective of the general society, and the growing circle of comic book fans. The “Gamergate” controversy is well known for blowing up the undercurrent of harassment and mistreatment of women in the video game business, but there have been several previous instances in comics that show a similar problem including when writer Chelsea Cain quit Twitter, and when Zainab Akhtar shuttered her award-winning Comics & Cola site. These are two other well-known examples of online harassment of women in the comic book business, and who knows how many others there are?

This is on top of Marvel’s VP of Sales David Gabriel saying earlier this year that Marvel’s slumping sales were because of their commitment to great a more diverse character slate, including Sam Wilson as Captain America, Jane Foster as Thor, Riri Williams as Ironheart, and Kamala Khan as Miss Marvel. Gabriel later retracted his comments, but the damage was beyond done by the time he did.

On the bright side, Twitter users have overwhelming responded for the positive with the #makeminemilkshake hashtag, showing ladies (and men) enjoying comics and milkshakes in support of Antos and other women in the comics business.

Throughout this run of Twin Peaks it’s seemed as though its creators have enjoyed a glacial pace of storytelling, characters and plots are introduced, and sometimes they’re followed up on immediately, and sometimes they’re forgotten for entire stretches of episodes. By comparison, the twelfth episode of the series was positively A.D.D. There were some parts where David Lynch‘s tendencies to draw out a scene for all the ticks and awkward looks and pauses was still intact, but for the most part, Lynch rolled us through one scene after another, and in the process brought back an old face who’s long been amiss.

We spent a lot of time in the company of the FBI this week as Gordon, Albert, Tammy and Diane remain in South Dakota, dealing with the fallout of last week’s revelation of the black hole, the remains of Ruth Davenport, and the mysterious murder of William Hastings. Considering all that horridness, you could hardly blame the FBI for stopping for a drink, but Gordon and Company seemed like they were living in a weird version of Sideways this week as Gordon, being a true connoisseur, travels with some selections from his own wine cellar because nothing goes better with talk about UFOs then a nice Bordeaux.

So the “Blue Rose” mentioned way back in one of the first episodes was a team-up between the Air Force and the FBI to investigate UFO-related cases after the end of Project: Blue Book; the name “Blue Rose” was uttered by a woman who died shortly after a close encounter. The last agents that Gordon recruited into the Blue Rose were Phillip Jeffries, Chet Desmond, Dale Cooper and Albert, and as Albert notes, he’s the only one that hasn’t disappeared mysteriously. Now Tammy has been inducted into the Blue Rose, which is an assignment she eagerly accepts even though it was very unclear what the present turn of events has to do with UFOs or little green men.

One person kept out of the UFO loop was Diane, who Albert is keeping careful tabs on, including monitoring her texts. Diane gets another one, presumably from Bob/Cooper who asks if the others are on to Las Vegas yet, to which Diane says that she’s not yet aware of any avenue of their investigation taking them to Sin City. (Remember, the LVPD took “Dougie’s” prints, so it’s only a matter of time.) As Albert and Gordon marinate on that, Diane inputs the co-ordinates left on Ruth’s arm into her phone and learns where they point to, and it’s none other than Twin Peaks, WA.

In that sleepy little hamlet things were hopping. Frank Truman paid a visit to Ben Horne to tell him that his grandson Richard has killed a little boy in a hit and run, and then tried to beat the only witness to death. Yes, as we learned last week, Miriam is alive and in intensive care, and she seems to have had some words with Sheriff Truman at some point. Ben is understandably upset to hear this, but admits that he doesn’t have much to do with Richard anymore since he refused to give his grandson anymore money, but he did pledge to pay for Miriam’s medical bills, and he also gave Sheriff Truman a gift for his brother: Dale Cooper’s old room key.

Let us pause here for the real reveal of the episode, coming at the exact two-thirds point of the series, the return of Audrey Horne. Now there’s long been a belief that Audrey was Richard’s mother, and it seemed as though the show was sitting on that reveal for maximum dramatic effect, but if that’s true, then why is Audrey seen so disinterested in finding her son now that he’s wanted for murdering a child? Instead, we see Audrey and her husband Charlie arguing over why Charlie would rather do his paperwork and then go to bed than help her find Billy. “Who’s Billy?” you may ask. Great question.

I did try and find out if there was any significance to Billy, but I came up empty, which means this is likely some new character we’ve never seen, or it could be an alias from some other character we’ve already seen. Either way, what can be inferred is that Billy is a gentleman that Audrey has been having an affair with, and that it’s serious enough to prompt her to ask for a divorce from Charlie despite whatever arrangement they previously had. Why Billy is missing is not explained, but a call to someone called Tina, who Audrey hates but Charlie is on good terms with, lends insight. We don’t hear the Tina side of the conversation, but it’s clear Audrey’s not going to like what she had to say.

There were some quick hits too, and that was quite literal in one sense. We see Hutch and Chantal kill the warden on Bob/Cooper’s instruction and quietly drive off to the cries of mourning from the warden’s young son. It’s a stark contrast to a lovely game of catch between Dougie and Sunny-Jim, which goes about as well as you’d think and was also, surprisingly, the only bit we saw of the OG Cooper this week. Then, in the Fat Trout Trailer Park, Carl told a man named Kriscol that he doesn’t have to give blood to get money to pay for his rent, another act of quiet decency on Carl’s part.

The last big piece of the week was Sarah Palmer, who was seen buying liquor and cigarettes because if your husband killed your daughter and niece and then died in police custody, why not? She has a kind of breakdown in the store, which considering her age and trauma might make you think she was afflicted with dementia or something similar. When Hawk drops by later though, Sarah seems perfectly fine, except for the sound of something rustling in her home though Sarah claims she’s alone. It’s worth remembering that one of the last scenes featuring Sarah in the original series was in the Double-R with Garland Briggs where she said in a weird voice, “I’m in the Black Lodge with Dale Cooper. I’m waiting for you.”

So that’s fascinating, but it’s a reminder that there’s still so much ground to cover in these final six hours, and though we covered a lot of ground this week, it feels like very little has been resolved. I wonder if the pace of reveals this week was meant to squeeze in as many new questions as possible because next week we start to tie everything together. If I were watching any other series, I feel that would be a safe assumption, but this has been no ordinary series, and something tells me we’ll be asking questions right up until the bitter end.

Earlier this year, back when Ben Affleck was going to write, direct, produce and star in the next live-action Batmanmovie, not much was known about the details of the project, but it was revealed that Joe Manganiello was going to co-star as the main villain, Deathstroke the Terminator. All bets were off though once Affleck stepped away from the director’s chair, and Matt Reeves took over. Since then, it’s been announced that Reeves has thrown out Affleck’s script, and is going to be his own thing, which has made fans wonder if “his own thing” included Deathstroke? Well, there may now be some insight.

Manganiello was asked in a new interview if he knew what the future held for Deathstroke. “I don’t. Well, I do but nothing that I can share. I know everything but I can’t say any of it,” the actor told The Hollywood Reporter, who followed up by asking the actor if the news made him happy or sad. “I’m shooting for a neutral tone,” he said.

In other words, don’t hold your breath. “It’s not up to me. That’s a good question for Warner Bros. and DC,” Manganiello added.

It was an unusual choice to have Deathstroke as the villain in The Batman because he’s typically a Teen Titans villain, although Slade Wilson has turned up in Batman books and other DC Comics titles (not to mention he was a very popular big bad on the CW’s Arrow). It was a bold move, but Reeves has made it very clear that he’s going to chase his own ideas for the upcoming Batman movie, and that may or may not include Deathstroke, who, played by Manganiello, would have been a very physical threat to the Dark Knight in any event. Even if he’s not in The Batman, it might be wise for Warners and DC to keep Manganiello on retainer.

Joe Manganiello will next be seen in the comedy Drunk Parents and in the video game movie Rampage opposite Dwayne Johnson.